Editor's Note: This post is part of our ongoing #MobileMonth series for May

Recently, we launched a tool to help marketers measure the Full Value of Mobile. Today, we’re highlighting why and how marketers need to think differently about measuring mobile.

Many marketers continue to evaluate mobile using traditional measurement metrics, such as last-click attribution. For example, if a consumer clicks on a mobile ad, visits your website and makes a purchase, the conversion would be directly attributed that mobile ad. However, marketers often don’t measure the other ways consumers on a mobile device are influenced to make purchases through other channels . Mobile frequently plays a role in leading consumers towards a purchase decision in five ways:

Cross-Device Purchase - Research that starts on a smartphone, but is followed up by a purchase on another device, such as a desktop

Mobile Commerce - Purchases made directly from the mobile device

It is important to measure and assign value to each of these five types of conversions so you can truly understand the contribution mobile plays to your business. If you only consider mobile conversions as purchases made directly on your mobile site, you may be significantly underestimating the true return on investment from mobile advertising. Building an attribution model to account for a variety of different mobile conversions is essential to understanding the full value of mobile.

Once you are tracking mobile signals across the various paths to purchase, you can use our Full Value of Mobile calculator to help you estimate the contribution each conversion activity is making to your business. In about 30 minutes, you can follow the step-by-step wizard to upload data from AdWords and your mobile website, and make some key assumptions to create your Full Value of Mobile estimate. Through the exercise, you’ll see the total value, value per click, and ROI that mobile is driving for your business across all mobile customer paths, not just your mobile website.

If you would like to learn more about mobile measurement and attribution, watch our webinar on the Full Value of Mobile.